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Ireland apologizes to women who worked without pay in Catholic laundries

A ledger from the Hyde Park Magdalene Laundry showing payments for services, is seen on display during a "Magdalene Survivors Together" news conference in Dublin earlier this month. (CATHAL MCNAUGHTON / Reuters FILE PHOTO)

By The Associated Press

Tues., Feb. 19, 2013

DUBLIN—Ireland’s premier has issued a state apology to the thousands of Irish women who spent years working without pay in prison-style laundries run by Catholic nuns.

Former residents of the now-defunct Magdalene Laundries have campaigned for the past decade to get the government to apologize and pay compensation to an estimated 1,000 survivors of the workhouses.

Two weeks ago the Irish government published an investigation into the state’s role in overseeing the laundries. It found that more than 10,000 women worked in 10 laundries from 1922 to 1996, when the last Dublin facility closed down.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny told lawmakers Tuesday that the laundry workers were victims of an Ireland that was “judgmental and intolerant, petty and prim.” About 20 former Magdalene workers were listening in parliament’s public gallery.

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